John Moore will direct Die Hard 5

When Noam Murro signed on to direct300: Battle of Artemisia for Warner Bros. in July it left 20th Century Fox in need of a director for Die Hard 5.

At the time John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, Max Payne) was the top contender, and now Deadline has confirmed that Moore will indeed direct Bruce Willis in his fifth outing as John McClane.

Joe Cornish (Attack the Block), Justin Lin (Fast Five) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) are said to have been on Fox’s wishlist, but they settled with Moore after Willis was swayed by the directors “love for the John McClane character, and his grasp of how to shoot practical, non-CGI-heavy action scenes”. Die Hard 5 will be set mostly in Russia with John McClane accompanied there by his son, and the two become drawn into a conflict with local forces.

Deadline also says Willis has been going through a similar list of names to direct the sequel to Red. As well as Willis the movie starred John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman, and is Summit Entertainment’s most successfull non-Twilight movie with $164 million worldwide made last year. The plan is for Willis to shoot Die Hard 5 first, and then move on to the Red sequel.